Parking Area Layout Templates for Low-Latency Empty Slot Prediction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing parking systems have high latency due to the need to confirm unoccupied parking slots after physically passing them, leading to increased maneuver execution time.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method determines a parking area layout by analyzing environmental data from vehicle sensors, identifying parking slots, assigning confidence scores to layout models, and predicting slot locations, allowing early detection of unoccupied spaces for smoother and faster parking maneuvers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the parking system waits for confirmation that a detected gap is unoccupied after passing it by, then the occupancy status is confirmed with high reliability, but the overall execution time for the parking maneuver is significantly increased
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary detection and classification of parking slots before the vehicle physically passes them. By using sensor data collected during vehicle movement to identify and classify parking slots in advance, the system can prepare occupancy status assessments beforehand, reducing the need to wait for post-passing confirmation and thereby decreasing overall maneuver execution time while maintaining reliability
2Measurement precision
If the parking system detects and confirms unoccupied parking slots only after passing them by, then the detection is based on actual sensor evidence, but the latency increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary detection and classification of parking slots before the vehicle physically passes them. By using sensor data collected during vehicle movement to identify and classify parking slots in advance, the system can prepare occupancy status assessments beforehand, reducing the need to wait for post-passing confirmation and thereby decreasing overall maneuver execution time while maintaining reliability
3Reliability
If the parking system uses multiple sensors and perception stack to collect environmental information, then the detection reliability is improved, but the processing complexity and time required increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses a unified perception stack that processes data from multiple sensor types (vision sensors, Lidar sensors, radar sensors, GNSS) through a single integrated processing framework. This multi-functional approach allows the same processing architecture to handle diverse sensor inputs, reducing overall system complexity while maintaining the reliability benefits of multi-sensor fusion
Data Source
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AI summary
The method includes: - determining environmental information about a surrounding environment of a vehicle (200) from sensing data provided by a sensing system of said vehicle, while the vehicle (200) is moving in a parking area ; - extracting one or more parameters associated with parking slots identified from the environmental information; - determining one or more layout models for the parking area based at least on the extracted one or more parameters, each layout model comprising an underlaying parking slot template; - assigning (S9) to each of the determined layout models a confidence score, indicating how the respective underlaying parking slot template matches the one or more parameters associated with the parking slots identified from the environmental information; and - selecting (S10) the layout model of the parking area having the highest confidence score as a current layout model used to determine the parking area layout; wherein, the selected layout model is updated over time based on the confidence scores assigned to the layout models generated from sensing data collected while the vehicle is moving.